Unity and NBCUniversal Partner for Game Dev Competition Featuring Back to the Future, Jaws, and More

Unity and NBCUniversal Partner for Game Dev Competition Featuring Back to the Future, Jaws, and More

In a partnership between Unity and NBCUniversal, indie developers will have the chance to craft a game idea featuring Universal's well-known IP.

With the indie game community full of creatives and young game designers looking to bring their games to life, Unity and NBCUniversal are taking on a unique challenge with their Universal GameDev Challenge to put some of Universal’s most well-known and established IP into the hands of indie devs for some unique new game ideas.

Unity Technologies has announced that the company has partnered with NBCUniversal to promote a game development competition called the Universal GameDev Challenge, where participating teams will have the opportunity to create game pitches around several of Universal’s properties, with a chance to bring those ideas to life.

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The terms of the competition specifically call for Unity developers to create game design documents and pitch videos providing PC game ideas centered around one of five of Universal’s properties: Back to the Future, Jaws, Battlestar Galactica, DreamWorks Voltron Legendary Defender, and Turok.

The winning and runner-up competitors will be given a (combined) $250,000 cash prize, while a consulting contract will also be given by Microsoft (who is collaborating in the event with Intel), Unity, and Universal on their game idea that could (potentially) bring the idea into full execution for a finished product.

The contest itself will be accepting entries from now through April 19th, 2018, and interested developers can register for participation on Unity’s website for the event, and entrants will be judged on four criteria – creative use of the brand, gameplay and narrative design, capability, and integration of tools.

From the pool of entrants, six finalists will be selected by a panel of four judges, who will then build a prototype of their game in action using any of the five previously-mentioned Universal properties. The six finalists will then compete for the grand prizes in May, will attend mentorship sessions with Microsoft, Intel, Unity, and Universal in June, submit final game prototypes in August, and then the winner and runner-up of the competition will be announced during Unite Los Angeles in October.

The contest came about as Universal is looking to expand its approach into game development and publishing, with the Universal GameDev Challenge marking one of its big steps towards that goal.